Diasporic identity is scarcely singular, yet Gianna Patriarca’s poetry collection Italian Women and Other Tragedies and Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story collection How to Pronounce Knife share particularly striking similarities in their portrayals of diasporic mothers and daughters. The domestic space of home shapes the shared...
The release of Beyoncé Knowles’s sixth studio album, Lemonade, signified a turning point in the conception of Black female identity within popular music. Described as a “shot heard around the world” by scholar Zeffie Gaines, the multimedia experience of Lemonade serves as an ode to...
It's not so much the full bottles As it is the empty glass. A broken promise Stale and sticky on the crooked coffee table. I’ll never drink whiskey again. It’s not so much the noxious assault in the doorway As it is the broken flag on the mailbox. Even when empty, I pushed...
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Sunday night might always be heavy. It might always remind us of every night we spent convincing everyone else they were worthy of healing, every instance bringing rise to the nights that we didn’t want to live. Maybe all...
I found a letter in my mailbox addressed to someone who doesn’t live here anymore. The same mailbox where someone left used cotton balls, rubber bands, and needles inside. The mailbox that I removed from a crumbling brick wall to sanitize with a bottle of...
The bartender starts work now. He doesn’t drive. He walks. I guide: a vanilla glow peeking at winter’s chalk drawings. He goes in through the front door. I go in through the window. The bartender’s lips are dry. He fills craters with liquid. Warm in the stomach. Water on the moon. Drops sift through space, down our cheeks, like...
Jane was leaving the convenience store when her romcom was ruined. What they don’t tell you about meet-cutes is that meeting is never as cute the second time around. In fact, the so-we-meet-again is the most awkward part, and it always happens when you’re not expecting...
Before he died, the last time I spoke to my father we were broiling underneath the August sun in section 126 at the old ballpark. All the covered seats at the diamond had sold out, but, despite knowing we’d inevitably get sunburnt, my father had...
When water melts would it smell like wax Unlikely: Butter. The oil that won’t come off I do not see the birds, only their feet, and even then, only the ones missing talons I’ve been pulling my hair out since I was little, letting it fall from my...